The unresolved problem is that cooperative funeral cover is typically described as a modest consumption-smoothing instrument, yet its claim-schedule thresholds also function as discontinuous rules that may alter a widow's bargaining position within the deceased husband's kin group. Using a before-after-control-impact estimator with an intraclass correlation of 0.64, a between-cluster standard deviation of 6.0 and a residual standard deviation of 4.5, power was estimated across 2000 replications per design cell for cluster counts of 8, 16, 24 and 32 and effect sizes of 3, 5 and 8 percentage points. The design attains 80 per cent power at 54 clusters for a 5-percentage-point effect. The claim-schedule threshold is a plausible institutional lever whose causal effect on land retention is identifiable in principle but demands cluster counts well beyond those typical of sub-county cooperative samples. The contribution is a design specification and a feasibility bound, not an estimated effect.
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Achieng' Atieno-Odhiambo (2026) studied this question.